Knitting method

ABSTRACT

A method of machine knitting a one-piece blank for making up into a garment; sleeve-portions of the blank are joined at their ends to at least one body portion and the joined parts are knitted with the same yarn whereas the parts of the sleeve and body portions which are separated from one another are knitted independently.

1116 Med 1 atent 8H0 1 54] KNI 1| G METHOD 464,118 12/1891 Granz ..66/189 UX Inventors: Max wmlam Rem, Cm-(emry; Frank 2,214,517 9/1940 Z|ppel ..66/128 X Rob s Borrowash, both of England FOREIGN PATENTS OR APPLICATIONS 17 1 A g Coumulds Limited, London, England 59,901 '1 1968 1511 06 1 .66 176 I 1,094,103 12/ 1967 Great Britain ..66/ 176 [22] filed 1968 348,499 10/1960 Switzerland ..66/189 [21] Appl. No.: 774,623

Primary Examiner-Wm. Carter Reynolds At: D ,l-l ',F'thfull&H d 52 us. CI. ..66/l2 8, 66/176 am we [51] Int. Cl. "D04b1l/24 57 ABSTRACT [58] Field ofSearclh ..66/176,175,76,189,128

A method of machine knitting a one-piece blank for making [56] References Cited up into a garment; sleeve-portions of the blank are joined at their ends to at least one body portion and the joined parts are UNITED STATES PATENTS knitted with the same yam whereas the parts of the sleeve and body portions which are separated from one another are 294,637 3/1884 Kreisel ..66/l76 412,055 10/1889 Williams.. 3,057,178 10/1962 ....66/ 176 Konklin ..66/ 176 knitted independently.

1 Claims, 4 Drawing Figures PATENTEI] Jlli 8 I972 SHEET 1 OF 2 22- HHHUHHHHHHT I rwenlor Davis, Hoxie, Faithfull & Hapgood .7 Atlorney PATENTED Jul 1 a 1912 SHEET 2 BF 2 IIIHIIHHIHIHH HIHIHIIHHIHI Inventor Max William Bette 3: Frank Robinson Davis, Hoxie, Faithfull & Hapgood A o y kNTTTrNo METHOD BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION This invention relates to a knitting method, and is concerned with the knitting of blanks for sleeved garments, the blanks being so shaped that they can be made up into garments by joining parts of the blanks together in some cases together with additional parts. A type of machine which can be used with advantage in carrying out the present method comprises at least one straight needle bed, a reciprocating head with cam tracks to cooperate with the butts of needles slidably mounted in grooves or tricks" in the or each needle bed for operating the needles independently of each other, and a plurality of yarn carriers to supply yarn for the production of knitted loops of yarn on needles which are operated by the reciprocating head for the purpose.

Such machines are known to the knitting art and for an example of such a machine the description of British Pat. No. 1,048,322 may be referred to. Alternatively, a machine having auxiliary beds moveable longitudinally of the main needle beds can be used to carry out the present method. A machine of such a kind is also known in the art and is described in U.S. Pat. No. 3,165,938. In carrying out the present method on such a machine with auxiliary beds, the auxiliary beds would have to be constructed to hold a sufficient number of needles to hold the individual sleeve and body portions of the present garment blank.

By the term sleeved garment we mean a garment comprising two sleeves secured to a body made from a plurality of body portions. Examples of such garments are pullovers, jumpers and singlets, which comprise front and rear body portions, and cardigans and lumber jackets, which comprise a rear body portion and two front body portions.

There are two known methods of producing sleeved garments in knitted fabric. In one of these methods flat or tubular knitted fabric is simply cut-into suitably shaped sleeve and body portions which are then secured together to form the garment, usually by stitching. In the other method the component sleeve and body portions are knitted to the shapes required by suitable increase or decrease of the numbers of stitches in the various courses-the process known as fashioningand then again the edges are secured together, usually by stitching.

In both these methods it is necessary to employ skilled labor for making up the garments by securing together the edges of the shaped sleeve and body portions. In particular it is an especially difficult operation to secure the sleeves to the body portions of a sleeved garment, so that in the finished garment the sleeves are accurately oriented with respect to the arm holes in the body and disposed at the correct angle with respect to the body. Moreover, the seams produced are sometimes unsightly, and seam failure is a common cause of complaint with such garments, ether due to inefficient seaming or due to the weakness of the seam causing it to burst during wear. Also in the first mentioned method a considerable quantity of fabric is usually cut to waste, sometimes as much as 40 percent of the total fabric used.

A blank produced by the present invention can be made up into a knitted sleeved garment by forming only a small number of seams compared with hitherto known methods. The amount of making up required to finish the garment is thus considerably reduced compared with hitherto known methods of making such garments.

SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION According to the invention a method of making a blank for a knitted sleeved garment comprises knitting as one piece of fabric and in opened out form on at least one array of needles in a knitting machine at least one body portion and the sleeve portions of the garment with each sleeve portion joined at its shoulder end to an edge of the said body portion, those parts of the sleeve portions and the body portion which are separated and do not have their courses joined in the one piece fabric to courses of another portion of the fabric being knitted independently of one another.

Preferably the blank comprises all the body portions of the completed garment. In this case each sleeve portion is joined at its shoulder end to an edge of at least one, and preferably two, of the body portions.

The completed garment is formed from the one-piece blank by appropriately folding the blank and joining together overlying edge portions thereof to form the desired garment.

Since both of the sleeve portions are joined securely to at least one body portion in the blank, the difficult operation of correctly orienting the sleeves in relation to the body portions during the fina "making up of the garment is entirely eliminated.

The blank may be knitted commencing at that end which is to define the neck opening of the finished garment. In this case knitting may commence using a single-yarn carrier and the fabric is appropriately widened in that section which is to form the shoulder region of the garment to obtain the desired angular relation between the courses of the sleeve portions, and the courses of the body portion or portions. When the junctions between the shoulder ends of the sleeve portions and the body portion or portions have been completed, the knitting of the separated parts of the body portion or portions and the sleeve portions is carried out, the separated parts being knitted with yarn from different yarn carriers.

Alternatively, the blank may be knitted from the lower ends of the sleeve portions and body portion or portions. In this case knitting of the separated parts of the sleeve portions and body portion or portions is commenced, the separated parts being knitted using yarn from separate supplies fed through different yarn carriers. When the underarm region is reached the separated parts are joined together and knitting then continues laying the same yarn across all the joined parts of the blank. During this final stage of knitting the section of the blank which is to form the shoulder region of the garment, the shoulder region is narrowed in order to obtain the desired angular disposition of the sleeves to the body in the finished garment.

In narrowing or widening the shoulder region, the method of narrowing used can be chosen to produce the style of shoulder desired.

' BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS The invention will now be described in greater detail, by way of example, with reference to the drawings, in which,

FIG. 1 is a plan of a one-piece fabric blank knitted by the method according to the invention,

FIG. 2 is a plan of a cardigan formed from the fabric blank of FIG. 1,

FIG. 3 is a plan of another one-piece fabric blank knitted by the method according to the invention, and

FIG. 4 is a plan of a pullover formed from the fabric blank of FIG. 3.

DESCRIPTION OF THE PREFERRED EMBODIMENTS The one-piece fabric blank shown in FIG. 1 comprises two sleeve portions 1, 2 and three body portions 3, 4 and 5. The sleeve portion 1 is joined to the body portions 3 and 4 along arm hole-defining edges of the latter which are indicated by the broken lines 6 and 7, respectively, and the sleeve portion 2 is joined to the body portions 4 and 5 along arm hole-defining edges of the latter which are indicated by the broken lines 8 and 9, respectively.

If the one-piece fabric blank of FIG. 1 is folded along the chain lines 10 and 11 so that the body portions 3 and 5 are superimposed on the body portion 4", then the garment shown in FIG. 2 can be produced by joining the body portions 3 and 4 along the edge 12 by joining the body portions 4 and 5 along the edge 13, and by joining the superimposed edges of the sleeve portion 1 and the superimposed edges of the sleeve portion 2 along the edges 14 and 115, respectively.

The one-piece fabric blank shown in FIG. 1 can be knitted on a knitting machine having a single array of needles in a single-needle bed and five yarn carriers. The sleeve portions and body portions are commenced as five separate fabrics constituting lower parts of the body and sleeve portions not having continuous courses and, each supplied with yarn from a separate supply through a different yarn carrier and arranged on the needle bed in the order; body portion 3, sleeve portion 1, body portion 4, sleeve portion 2 and body portion 5. As knitting proceeds, the sleeve portions 1 and 2 are widened and the stitches are so arranged that, when the points 16-19 are reached, at least one spare needle is left between each pair of adjacent portions in order to give sufficient clearance for the yarn carriers.

It will be appreciated that the length of the sleeve portions up to the points 16-19 need not be the same as the length of the body portions up to these points. For examples, if the body of the garment is required to be longer than the sleeves, the butts can be set, at some stages before the points 16-19 are reached, to cause only those needles carrying the body portions to knit for an appropriate number of courses, to give the required additional length for those portions. Knitting will then continue on all the portions as before. When the points 16-19 have been reached, four of the yarn carriers are removed and the stitches are rearranged on the needle bed to join the sleeve and body portions together. For example, stitches may be hand transferred as by a narrowing handle so that the innermost stitches of the sleeve portions 1 and 2 are received on the outermost needles carrying the body portion 4 and the innermost stitches of the body portions 3 and 5 are received on the outermost needles carrying the sleeve portions 1 and 2, respectively. As well as, or instead of, stitch transfer, the rearrangement of the stitches where the portions of fabric are joined may comprise the inclusion of additional stitches by needle introduction.

Knitting is then continued with the remaining yarn carrier traversing all the stitches to form the top parts of the sleeve and body portions. In order to obtain the desired style of garment, and the required angular relationship between the sleeves and body when the garment is completed some or all of these top parts have to be narrowed. The fabric shown in FIG. 1 is shaped to produce a Raglan style of cardigan, each of the sleeve and body portions being progressively narrowed, but it will be understood that other styles could be produced by narrowing the fabric in different ways. In this particular embodiment, repeated narrowing is effected by reducing the number of wales which originally formed each of the separate sleeve and body portions to produce the inclined join lines 6, 7, 8 and 9. Narrowing may be effected at or adjacent to the join lines, the latter case producing parallel lines of fashioning marks on each side of the join lines, which will appear simply as normal parallel wales.

Narrowing may be effected in every course on the wales of each of the original sleeve and body portions, or only on some courses, and in the latter case the narrowing of the sleeve and body portions can be effected the same or different courses, depending upon the appearance required. In every case, however, whenever a narrowing operation takes place, all the stitches disposed laterally outside each eliminated wale, with respect to the center of the body portion 4, must be transferred inwardly for example by hand, by the number of stitches narrowed. Thus, if the fabric was to be narrowed by one stitch on each side of the wales which originally formed the body portion 4, all the stitches of the sleeve portions 1 and 2 and the body portions 3 and 5 would have to be moved inwardly by one needle, and further inward movement would be required if the numbers of wales in these portions were also reduced in the same course.

The above-described method of knitting the one-piece fabric blank is, it will be appreciated, a very tedious operation on an ordinary knitting machine, since it includes the transfer of many stitches between needles. The method may, however, be performed much more easily on modified flat bar V-bed knitting machines having two opposed arrays of needles and auxiliary needle beds or other stitch transfer elements the transfer of large numbers of loops between needles being avoided by knitting the outer portions 3, 1 and 2, 5 each on a separate pair of auxiliary needle beds which are moveable relative to the main beds and to each other to reveal empty needles for the introduction of new stitches for the widening of the garment. The manner of knitting of the garment blank on needles of auxiliary beds and moving the auxiliary beds relative to the main needle beds to introduce new loops is fully described in U.S. Pat. No. 3,167,938. The present method would require two additional pairs of auxiliary beds compared with the machine described in that specification but no invention would be involved in mounting such beds in a machine as described in that specification.

Furthermore, with such a modified flat bar V-bed knitting machine it is also possible to knit the one-piece fabric with more complicated stitch formations, such as rib structures. On a machine with appropriate facilities, ribbed edgings 20 to 24 may be provided on the one-piece fabric, as shown, by knitting these parts of the fabric on two opposed arrays of needles. The edgings 21 and 23 on the sleeve portions can have the same length as, or a different length from the edgings 20, 22 and 24 on the body portions.

It will, of course, be appreciated that the one-piece fabric blank shown in FIG. 1 may be knitted commencing from the neck opening 29 of the fabric. In this case knitting commences with one yarn carrier up to the points 16-19. Widening of the fabric is achieved by needle introduction, accompanied by outward movement of the stitches laterally outside the needles introduced. When the points 16-19 are reached, knitting of the separated sleeves and body portions then continues using five yarn carriers.

FIG. 3 shows another one-piece fabric blank knitted by the method according to the invention. The fabric blank shown in this figure comprises two sleeve portions 31, 32 and two body portions 33, 34. The sleeve portion 31 is joined to the body portion 33 along an armhole-defining edge of the latter which is indicated by the broken line 36, and the sleeve portion 32 is joined to the body portions 33 and 34 along armhole-defining edges of the latter which are indicated by the broken lines 37 and 38, respectively.

If the one-piece fabric blank of FIG. 3 is folded along the chain lines 40 and 41 so that the body portion 34 is superimposed on the body portion 33, then the pullover shown in FIG. 4 can be produced by joining the superimposed body portions along the edges 42 and 43, by joining the superimposed edges of the sleeve portion 31 and the superimposed edges of the sleeve portion 32 along the edges 44 and 45, respectively, and by joining the sleeve 31 to the body portion 34 along the line 39.

It will be appreciated that the one-piece fabric blank shown in FIG. 3 may be knitted in a similar way to the fabric blank shown in FIG. 1 employing, for example, a flat V-bed knitting machine which has four yarn carriers.

In a modification of the method of producing a garment described above with reference to FIGS. 3 and 4, a one-piece fabric blank consisting of the portions 31, 32 and 33 is produced on a machine having three yarn carriers. After folding the one-piece fabric about the lines 40 and 41 indicated in FIG. 3, a separately knitted body portion similar in shape to the body portion 34 is superimposed on the body portion 33 and the completed gannent is formed by securing the separately knitted body portion to the one-piece fabric along the lines 38, 39, 42, 43, 44 and 45.

The invention is not limited to the production of the particular garment blanks and garments illustrated in FIGS. 1 to 4. It is also possible to produce other sleeved garments, for example singlets, jumpers, longand short-sleeved dresses and lumber jackets. Again, other contours of the style lines where the sleeves join the body portions of the garment may be provided and other kinds of stitch formation may be employed in the one-piece fabric. In front-fastening styles of garment, such as the cardigan shown in FIG. 2, by suitable widening or narrowing of the free edges of the outermost body portions 3 and 5, an overlapping style can be produced. I

Instead of knitting all the separated parts of the body portions and sleeve portions contemporaneously either before or after the shoulder region of the garment, as described above, the separated portions can be knitted consecutively and, if desired, of yarn from a single supply fed through a single-yam carrier. The yarn will then extend between the separated parts, since after knitting the last course of one separated part it will be carried without interruption to the first course of the next separated part to be knitted. The term knitting the separated parts independently is used in this specification and the appendant claims to include knitting these parts in the manner just described as well as knitting them in the manner described with reference to the drawings.

We claim:

l. A method of knitting a blank for making up into a sleeved garment on a straight bed knitting machine, the method comprising knitting a blank in opened-out form so as to comprise at least one body portion and the sleeve portions of the garment with the top parts of the sleeve portions at the shoulder ends of the sleeve joined to edges of the top part of the body portion, the method including knitting the said top parts of the sleeve and body portions using yarn from the same supply and knitting these parts in such a way that the courses of knitting extend in an uninterrupted manner laterally across them, knitting, independently, with yarn from separate supplies, parts of the sleeve and body portions below the top parts in the finished garment so that such lower parts do not have courses joined to one another in the finished blank, and knitting said lower parts with wales extending in the longitudinal direction of the sleeves and body portions so that the courses of knitting extend in the finished garment around the sleeves and across the front and back of the body.

mg v UNITED STATES PATENT @FFHQE CERTEEWAHE @l QQRREQTWN Pate t N 3 635 O51 Dated January 18, 1972 I Max William Bette-Frank Robinson Y It is certified that error appears in the above-identified patent and that said Letters Patent are hereby corrected as shown below:

WW In the heading, the following should appear:-

Claims priority of Great Britain 54712/67,

filed December 1, 1967,

sigma and sealed this 20th day of November 1973.,

(SEAL) Attest:

EDWARD M .F ETcHER,.1 R RENE 0., TEGTMEYER Attesting Officer Acting Gommissioner of Patents 

1. A method of knitting a blank for making up into a sleeved garment on a straight bed knitting machine, the method comprising knitting a blank in opened-out form so as to comprise at least one body portion and the sleeve portions of the garment with the top parts of the sleeve portions at the shoulder ends of the sleeve joined to edges of the top part of the body portion, the method including knitting the said top parts of the sleeve and body portions using yarn from the same supply and knitting these parts in such a way that the courses of knitting extend in an uninterrupted manner laterally across them, knitting, independently, with yarn from separate supplies, parts of the sleeve and body portions below the top parts in the finished garment so that such lower parts do not have courses joined to one another in the finished blank, and knitting said lower parts with wales extending in the longitudinal direction of the sleeves and body portions so that the courses of knitting extend in the finished garment around the sleeves and across the front and back of the body. 